The Prague book fair is underway and I had to take refuge from the Friday crowds of schoolchildren in my local café, which, as it turns out, is crowded with slightly older schoolchildren trying to look even older through chain-smoking and midafternoon glasses of wine. Book World Prague 2015’s Guest of Honor is Egypt and there is an extensive program dealing with everything from the country’s recent revolution to contemporary Egyptian writing to “Havel and Egypt” to mummies in the Czech lands.
Too many writers in attendance to mention all or even many of them but of those I’ve heard of, read and written about the standouts are Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Polish author of Entanglement and Grain of Truth, along with the Korean Kim Young-ha, author of I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. Also, tons of great Czech writers. I just saw Jáchym Topol on a panel with two Czech photographers and will hopefully soon see both Lubomír Martínek and Patrik Ouředník, both participating as part of this year’s focus on Czech expatriate writers (both live in France).
More tomorrow…
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